Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 55 – I Hope You Were Paying Attention

It didn’t take Sen and the fire cultivator long to catch up with the other two. They’d gone maybe half a mile before they apparently started having second thoughts. It was a show of loyalty, but stupid loyalty in Sen’s opinion. If he hadn’t intervened, they would have just gotten themselves killed for nothing after it was too late to do any good. It was a tiny bit amusing to watch their faces contort as they experienced surprise, relief, and happiness at seeing the fire cultivator, only for it to turn to mortification as they saw Sen himself. The fire cultivator just shook his head violently and said two words that were more command than statement.

“The camp.”

Sen kept his own qinggong technique going just strongly enough to push the three cultivators who were moving ahead of him. This was supposed to be the beginning of their punishment. He didn’t want them to feel too comfortable. He did ease off a bit when he felt the fire cultivator’s qi flagging. It was all too easy to forget how limited a foundation formation cultivator’s qi reserves were. Plus, that one had launched that flashy fire fist attack. That technique alone had probably eaten through a lot of those reserves.

The more Sen thought about that attack, the less he liked it. At first, he’d thought the problem with it was that the cultivator just didn’t have good fine control. That was a safe assumption when dealing with most qi-condensing and foundation formation cultivators. It wasn’t even necessarily a failing. Experience and necessity tended to be the two main contributors to developing fine control over qi. Most cultivators got it through prolonged experience over the course of centuries. Sen had mostly gone the other way and developed it out of pure, desperate need in more fraught battles than he cared to remember.

In this case, though, he’d had a few minutes to think about the construction of the technique. The problem was there, not with the cultivator. It was grossly inefficient, and it appeared to be that way by design. He’d figured that part out after about fifteen seconds. It had taken the remainder of the time to figure out why it was that. He ultimately realized that whoever had created the technique had sacrificed efficiency to make it look more impressive. It bled qi to create a halo of flame around the fire fist. Yet, that fire halo added nothing to its offensive power. It might kill mortals, but not much else. Sen estimated that just by fixing that bleeding, it would enhance the force of the technique by ten percent, or even a little more.

That still probably wouldn’t have been enough to kill that lead ice bear. However, the spirit beast probably would have been sufficiently injured to make it back off. For those three foundation formation cultivators, that would have been a victory in itself. Not that Sen was satisfied with just fixing the most obvious flaw with the technique. Compared to the Shadow Gate technique, where he was guessing as much as understanding, this was simplicity itself. And it was gratifying to have a problem he could easily solve in the meager time it took them to get back to the cultivators’ part of the army camp.

While he’d been hiding when he followed the cultivators and observed them, he did nothing to mask his presence on the way back. When they all arrived, the three foundation formation cultivators were gasping for breath. Sen, on the other hand, simply stared with a calm expression at the gathered seniors of the various sects. They did a better job of concealing their shock, but their bows were all a touch too slow.

Gesturing at the three out-of-breath cultivators, Sen said, “I assume these three belong to one of you.”

One of the crowd stepped forward and offered another, more obviously nervous bow. Sen considered the man. He had the sleek refinement that made most cultivators attractive, but there was something about him. Something that reminded Sen of Shi Ping in the early days, right after they left the Order of the Celestial Flame. It was a lingering air of apathy and laziness.

“Yes, Lord Lu. These three are my responsibility.”

“Are they?”

“Yes, Lord Lu,” said the man, his eyes darting between Sen and the three cultivators who had caught their breath.

“Good. Then, I’m sure you can explain to me why they were far from the camp and without a senior to guide them in their battle against three ice bears.”

Sen had to repress the urge to shake his head as he watched this man make the decision to throw his three juniors under the cart. There were a lot of ways to handle this situation, but that was the worst option in Sen’s opinion. While it took no imagination to understand that some kind of punishment was coming, it could have been mitigated. Even a simple acknowledgment of the failure and an apology would have been enough to temper it. None of this behavior came as a surprise. It was just disappointing. Sen had hoped that their time together in the war would have fostered more loyalty between the cultivators. Then again, maybe it had for some, and this one was just the exception.

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“Lord Lu, these three clearly disobeyed your orders not to leave the camp. They should be punished.”

Sen looked at the three and asked, “Did you receive an order to leave the camp?”

“No, Lord Lu,” said the fire cultivator in a tight, nervous voice.

The other two swiftly echoed that admission.

“Very well. Since you did disobey my orders, you will assist in attending to the camp latrines for the next month.”

All three grimaced but said nothing. The task was humiliating for cultivators, but Sen had discovered that it was the most effective kind of punishment. Sen didn’t have a good way to imprison them. Nor did he see that as a particularly useful method of correcting cultivator behavior. Even if he used cultivation-suppressing formations, he’d need to keep them locked away for decades before it became a true punishment. A few weeks of confinement were nothing for people who could spend months in solitary cultivation as preparation for advancement. Stinging their pride, though, was something that would stick with them.

“You are also restricted from any independent gathering for the same period of time,” Sen continued.

While the army still burned a lot of the wilds when it first entered a new kingdom, there were still many opportunities to gather useful ingredients for pills and elixirs. Again, a month wasn’t a long time, but they might find themselves forced to leave behind exactly the right ingredient for what they needed. That would be painful for them. Even the prospect of it would be painful for them. Sen hoped that it would be painful enough to discourage others from making equally foolish trips beyond the camp. It wasn’t as though he’d forbidden gathering when they weren’t actively fighting. He just expected the cultivators to carry out those activities with a modicum of wisdom. Something the three standing in front of him had utterly failed to do.

All three bowed and said, “Yes, Lord Lu.”

With that, Sen turned to their supposed senior and said, “Now, what to do about you?”

The vaguely satisfied look on the man’s face vanished.

“I fail to understand, Lord Lu.”

“What is there to understand? These three disobeyed my orders, but a failure like that doesn’t happen without cause. It seems obvious to me that you failed to make them understand either the reason for that order or the importance of it. Beyond that, there is your greater failure.”

“Wh— Wh— What greater failure?” stammered the man.

“Your failure to notice them leaving, or to then notice their absence. You said they were your responsibility, did you not? Do you not see it as part of that responsibility to know when your juniors are missing? I noticed. So, I have to wonder, what were you doing that was so important that I ended up carrying out your responsibility? After all, if I hadn’t intervened, all three of them would be dead.”

The cultivator just stared in silence; his lips pressed into a hard line. Whatever he had been doing, he clearly didn’t want to announce it to all the other cultivators. Not that Sen particularly cared about the specifics. Maybe it was shameful. Maybe it was just embarrassing. The point was just to get it out into the open that he hadn’t been taking his duties to his juniors seriously.

“I could decide your punishment,” said Sen, “but I feel that is a task best left to Song Lan.”

From the way the cultivator flinched, Sen got the impression that he would rather have Sen decide. That likely meant that Song Lan was particularly unforgiving in her punishments.

“I’m sure a few of your peers will be happy to escort you to her.”

He probably could have just given an order to report to her, but not every cultivator here had given him a vow to the heavens. Nor could Sen be bothered to remember the face of every person who had given such a vow. There had just been too many for that to be a worthwhile use of his memory. He’d been right that there were a few people in the gathered crowd who were more than happy to seize the cultivator and drag him away.

“Now,” said Sen, turning his attention back to the three cultivators, “I don’t know exactly why you were out there, but I can guess. So, don’t think of this as a reward, but as a statement about how I view sloppy techniques.”

Sen lifted a hand and closed it into a fist. What he did next felt agonizingly slow to him, but should be discernible to the foundation formation cultivators. He formed his version of the fiery fist technique using only as much power as he thought the three in front of him could use. It didn’t bleed flames, nor was it even red, yellow, or orange. Instead, the qi fist glowed almost white from how Sen compressed the fire qi. He was forced to use air qi to direct the heat up and away from the closest cultivators. Otherwise, he worried it might actually burn some of them. After he’d held the technique in place for the better part of ten seconds, he released it. The three foundation formation cultivators stared with dumbfounded expressions at the spot where the technique had been.

“I hope you were paying attention,” said Sen. “That technique might have saved your lives today without my intervention.”